Life Is In the Balance: Artist Talk

On September 9th, I had the wonderful opportunity speak with an enthusiastic group of Narrows Botanical Gardens visitors about the Life Is In the Balance series of drawings. I briefly discussed my academic background and related work from my fifty year career as a professional artist. There were questions about the materials used in the original drawings and how they were reproduced to be weather resistant. I talked about each one of the drawings in the order they were created and identified the plants and where they can/could be found in the gardens, when seasonally appropriate.

    Photo:Luz Diaz

The most informative for the visitors, and the most fun for me was to go around the gardens and visit a few of the locations where they could see the plants that inspired me. 

As luck would have it, the milkweed seed pods were "ripe" and full of seeds. We reminisced about our intrigue as children with the floating seeds. We all had forgotten how soft they are.


Photo: Luz Diaz

Next stop was the large concrete watergarden on Shore Road. I learned that the concrete "pools" had been sandboxes back in the day.

 

Photo: Kristin Reiber Harris
                              

If you look very carefully, you can see a frog peeking out from underneath the leaves of the water lettuce. There had been what appeared to be hundreds of tadpoles, so it was not at all surprising to see many frogs. The challenge was finding them hidden in the water and among the plants.


Photo: Kristin Reiber Harris

Waterlilies were blooming in the watergarden. We spend some time exploring this lush wonderful resource. Many had not really taken the time to look closely...essential to really appreciating the bounty and wonder of nature. 

 The exhibit has been extended for a week or so if you haven't gotten to see the work yet. 

 Learn more about my work at KristinHarrisDesign.com.

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